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Distributed Formation Flight Control of Multirotor Helicopters

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Abstract

This paper treats the problem of position formation flight control of a group of three multirotor aerial vehicles under obstacle and collision avoidance constraints. In order to solve the problem, a distributed architecture with model predictive controllers for each vehicle includes a set of convex constraints on the vehicles’s position to prevent collisions with other vehicles and obstacles. The resulting distributed scheme controls the formation based on a virtual structure approach where the computers of the architecture exchange position data through diagrams in Simulink. The performance of the method is assessed through simulations considering that the vehicles are subject to disturbance forces and the results show the effectiveness and the ability of the control architecture to handle the obstacle and collision avoidance constraints.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), by research project grant 475251/ 2013-0 and doctoral scholarship, and the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA) by the necessary support to realize the present work.

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Correspondence to Ícaro Bezerra Viana.

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Viana, Í.B., Santos, D.A.d., Góes, L.C.S. et al. Distributed Formation Flight Control of Multirotor Helicopters. J Control Autom Electr Syst 28, 502–515 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40313-017-0315-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40313-017-0315-1

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